Contents

History and politics

The NOP registered as a political party in 1992. It claims to be the reincarnation of National Radical Camp, the pre-war nationalist youth organisation, which was banned in 1934.[1][2]

NOP publishes the magazine Szczerbiec (the name of the Polish royal coronation sword), which lists neofascists Derek Holland and Roberto Fiore among the members of its editorial board,[1]Młodzież Narodowa (National Youth), Myśl (The Thought), and Biuletyn NOP. The publishing house was closed after 1989 and the collapse of the Communist regime.

The NOP is known for trying to get media attention with its shock value campaigns.[8] During the 2007 parliamentary and Senate elections, the NOP distributed election campaign posters with the slogan "Fascism? We are worse."[8]

Another, openly homophobic shock value campaign conducted by the NOP was called Zakaz Pedałowania (Forbid Homosexuality).[9] On 17 May 2006 in Toruń, the NOP organized a counter-demonstration against a public LGBT rights supporters' meeting.
NOP members chanted slogans, including "gas the queers" (pedały do gazu) and "there will be a baton for each queer face" (znajdzie się kij na pedalski ryj).[10][11]

A number of NOP-related incidents received some media coverage in Poland and abroad. According to the European Roma Rights Centre, on July 3, 1998, NOP supporters vandalised the Roma community centre in Łódź. Along with racist graffiti, swastikas were sprayed onto the office walls. The perpetrators also left behind their signature as NOP - Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski. During the same night, the same group reportedly vandalised the premises of the Jehovah's Witnesses religious group.[21]

In March 2000, in Łódź, swastikas and the slogan "Jews out!" along with NOP symbols were spray-painted on the home of Marek Edelman, who was the deputy commander in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the last of the leaders of the uprising still alive. The incident was condemned by the president and prime minister of Poland, who sent Edelman letters of support and apology.[22]

In 2003, the NOP, together with other Polish skinhead and far right groups, organized free summer camps for teenagers. During the camps participants were trained how to recognize a Jew from his physical appearance and how to recognize anarchists, pacifists and "the pigs who endanger the white race" by their clothes. In the camp the pictures of African-Americanshanged by the Ku Klux Klan were shown, and tapes with Nazi music were played. Paint-ball was practiced shooting at targets depicting a Jew, an Arab and a pig standing on two legs.[23]

NOP front organization National-Radical Institute (Instytut Narodowo-Radykalny, INR) was involved in publishing Western and Polish Holocaust denial literature. In 1997, INR published a volume of translated works of Western Holocaust deniers under the title The Myth of the Holocaust[1]. The same year, INR announced that there were no exterminations in gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.[1][24]

In 2006, the NOP was involved in campaigning to free convicted British Holocaust denier David Irving from prison in Austria, and produced a poster containing the slogan "David Irving - Uwolnić prawdę" ("David Irving - Free the truth".[25])

The party also expressed support for the bombing of Israel at the time of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, with a poster image stating, "Bomby na Izrael - Już czas !!!" ("Bombs against Israel - it's about time!!!").[26] On August 13, 2006, NOP leader Adam Gmurczyk published a declaration on behalf of the NOP Executive Council titled Izrael musi zostać zniszczony! (Israel must be destroyed!), calling for the international military takeover of Israel, and offering to put administrative control of Jerusalem in the hands of Pope Benedict XVI and his successors.[27]

On April 14, 2007, in Krakow, anti-Semitic slogans were shouted and fascist-like gestures made by the participants of an NOP demonstration. Investigations by the Public Prosecutor’s Office were discontinued on November 26, 2007, as no perpetrators were identified and the case was not classified as an offense.[28]